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Members of the Bioengineering Institute of Catalonia participate in this international study that is already in the testing phase
Researchers from the Bioengineering Institute of Catalonia (IBEC) have participated in an international study that has identified a drug in the clinical phase that blocks the effects of COVID-19, caused by the SARS-CoV-2 coronavirus, in its early stage of infection. .
IBEC experts, together with researchers from the Karolinska Institute of Sweden, the Institute of Molecular Biotechnology of the Austrian Academy of Sciences and the Life Sciences Institute (LSI) of the University of British Columbia, have identified this drug, which is already in clinical testing phase, using the mini-kidneys generated in the Barcelona laboratory using bioengineering techniques.
IBEC researchers, led by Núria Montserrat, have managed to decipher how SARS-CoV-2 interacts and infects human kidney cells and, from there, they have seen the potential of the drug, as published today in the magazine "Cell" .
Use of mini-kidneys
To carry out the tests, the researchers have used mini-kidneys developed from human stem cells generated at the IBEC by the Montserrat team, organoids, created using bioengineering techniques, which reflect the complexity of the real organ, which has allowed them to decipher how the virus infects human kidney cells, in addition to identifying a therapy aimed at reducing its viral load.
"The use of human organoids allows us to very quickly test treatments that are already being used for other diseases or that are close to being validated. In these moments when time is of the essence, these 3D structures drastically save the time we would spend to test a new medicine on humans," commented Núria Montserrat.
Recent publications have shown that, to infect a cell, coronaviruses use a protein, called S, that binds to a receptor on human cells called ACE2 (angiotensin-converting enzyme 2).
